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Which meant that, somehow, Honor had to stop her within the next ninety-seven minutes. If she didn't, then the only way to prevent her from translating into hyper would be to destroy her.
Captain Johan Coglin sat on his bridge. He'd run out of curses ten minutes before; now he simply sat and glared at his display while anger flowed through his mind like slow lava.
Operation Odysseus had seemed like a reasonable plan when he was first briefed for it. A few too many ruffles and flourishes, perhaps, but reasonable. There'd been no special reason why they had to use his ship for it, yet no one had listened when he suggested they use a genuine freighter. They'd wanted Sirius's higher acceleration levels and hyper speed "just in case," and he'd been far too junior to argue the point. And, he supposed, if things had gone as pla
From the begi
There was no doubt in his mind that Fearless's captain had grasped the essentials of Odysseus, and even in his anger, his own professionalism had to admire Harrington's instant, iron-nerved response. Blowing the consulate courier boat's drive that way had been incredibly risky but brilliant, reducing the players to Sirius and Fearless instead of leaving her two potential targets to pursue, and his sensors had detected the separation of three pi
Which meant that Coglin's part of Odysseus was probably already pointless. With no massacre in the enclaves, Haven could hardly claim that their naval forces had responded only to save off-worlder lives.
Coglin ground his teeth together. That asshole idiot Ca
So here he was, ru
Yet he had no choice now. Ca
He queried NavInt's files for the readout on Fearless's armament. She was one of the last of the old Courageous-class ships, almost eighty T-years old and small for her rate, by modern standards. But that didn't mean she was senile. The surviving units of her class had been thoroughly overhauled over the years, and they packed a nasty weight of metal for their age and size. They were light on defense, virtually unarmored and with relatively weak radiation shielding (for warships), but they mounted a pair of grasers, two thirty-centimeter lasers, and seven missile tubes in each broadside. They lacked the magazine capacity for a sustained missile engagement, but they could throw surprisingly heavy salvos for their size while their ammo lasted—more than enough to reduce any freighter to glowing vapor. Or it should have been, anyway.
He looked away from the readout and returned his eyes to the maneuvering display. Fearless's light dot swept after him, still losing ground but accelerating steadily, and he glared at it and clenched his fists. Damn Ca
And now her very success was going to cost her her life.
"Coming up on fifty-six minutes, Captain. Velocities will match at one-seven-one-zero-six KPS in thirty-two seconds."
"Thank you, Mr. McKeon." Honor rubbed her fingers over her thigh, wishing her suit gloves let her actually feel the contact. She glanced over at Webster.
"Lieutenant, prepare to record a transmission to Sirius."
"Recording, Ma'am," Webster replied.
"Captain Coglin," Honor said slowly and clearly, "this is Commander Honor Harrington of Her Manticoran Majesty's Starship Fearless. I request and command you to heave to for examination. Please cut your drive and stand by to receive my boarding party. Harrington out."
"On the chip, Ma'am," Webster said. "Prepared to transmit on your command."
"Thank you." She leaned back in her chair and glanced at the maneuvering display, waiting until the velocity of her ship exactly matched that of Sirius, then nodded. "Send it now."
"Transmitting, aye, Ma'am."
Almost seven-point-seven million kilometers separated the two ships as Honor's message raced after Sirius. It took the transmission over twenty-five seconds to cross that gulf of space—twenty-five seconds in which Sirius moved another four hundred and forty-one thousand kilometers. The total transmission time was over twenty-seven seconds, and Johan Coglin's face went hard as stone as his com officer played it for him. His eyes dropped to the light dot astern of him—the light dot which had stopped losing ground and started, oh so slowly, to overhaul—and he said nothing.
"No response, Ma'am," Webster reported.
Honor bit her lip but made herself nod calmly, as if she'd expected it. And perhaps she had. Perhaps she simply hadn't wanted to admit to herself that she'd known all along Sirius would refuse to stop. She was virtually certain Johan Coglin was no merchant service officer. Or, if he was, he held a reserve naval commission, as well. Haven wouldn't have trusted this operation to a merchant skipper, and a Navy officer would have his orders. He would no more stop than Honor herself would have. Not unless he was made to.
Her mind shied away from the thought of firing into an unarmed freighter, but if Coglin refused to heave to, she would have no choice, and she castigated herself for using all three pi